Factors In uencing the Economic Behavior of the Food, Beverages and Tobacco Industry: A Case Study for Portuguese Enterprises

Abstract

In today's world, it is increasingly important to conduct economic and nancial analyzes of enterprises in all sectors to determine strengths, identify weaknesses and adopt strategies that allow them to be at the highest competitive level. In particular, the food sector plays an essential role in the economy of any country, representing a signicant contribution to gross domestic product, total employment, and disposable income of households. In this work, we adopt a methodology for measuring eciency based on the multidirectional eciency analysis and other mathematical techniques (the calculation of the normal distribution intersection coecient (NC value), analysis of clusters and principal components, and model tting) in order to examine the factors that in uence the performance of Portuguese enterprises in the food, beverages and tobacco industry for the period of 2006-2013. The results show a characterization of the nancial structure of the sector and diagnosis through indexes that identify the strategic positioning of the enterprises in terms of eciency scores. In addition, we also show that an analysis of the variables that must be approached dierently to obtain better results regarding economic performance. Although there is an increase in credit with the acquisition of long-term debts, there is no evidence that this implies the ability of enterprises to grow faster, which aects protability.